Eliminate Odor in Your Home for Free Using Vinegar!

The Best Odor Eliminator For the Home

Are you searching for the best odor eliminator you can find because something in your house smells funny? Trust me, you are not alone!

It's a very common problem. You come home, open the door, and notice a funky odor. In some cases, you can identify the source. Perhaps your kitty urinated on the carpet or you forgot to take out the trash. Other times, however, the source of the odor is more mysterious. You walk around sniffing like a bloodhound but you can't quite figure out where the offensive smell is coming from.

Household odors are most often caused by bacteria and mildew, a foul smelling fungus. When you cook, small food particles become airborne and later settle onto all your household surfaces where bacteria feed on them and produce a smell. Food particules will also accumulate in you kitchen drains, your dishwasher, and your microwave. Mildew will grow in the cracks of your kitchen, bathroom, flooring, carpets, drapes, and upholstery.

While you can spend a great deal of money on commercial cleaners, most will only temporarily mask the odor with a strong perfume. Once this wears off, you will notice your household odors are still there. At best, these cleaners will clean one thing at a time. However, household odors only rarely have a single source so it's better to use something that can attack and eliminate the odor on multiple fronts.

The 10 Most Common House Odors

Use Vinegar!

The best odor eliminator for the home is white vinegar. Instead of masking the odor, it neutralizes the odor by breaking down the sources of the odor. White vinegar is a powerful anti-bacterial and anti-fungal agent so it eliminates the causes of the odor.

The simplest way to eliminate household odors using white vinegar is to simply set out a small bowl of vinegar overnight or before you leave for the day. Almost like magic, the odors will disappear in most cases. If you have a big house, you may want to use more than one bowl of vinegar. Be sure to place one in all your trouble spots such as the kitchen and bathroom. If you have drapes, take a whiff and if they smell funky, place a bowl of vinegar right beside them.

If your household odors are not completely eliminated using the vinegar bowl method, you can try cleaning with vinegar. To make a white vinegar cleaning solution, simply mix one part water with one part vinegar. Place this is a spray bottle to make cleaning easier.

How to Clean with Your Homemade White Vinegar

Here are some specific tips on how to clean with your homemade white vinegar cleaning solution:

1. Spray, let soak, and then wipe down all your hard surfaces such as kitchen and bathroom counter tops, the inside and outside of the microwave, the inside and outside of the refrigerator, bathtubs, sinks, the litter box, venetian blinds, your mirrors, your windows, tiled surfaces, and metal surfaces.

2. Clean your lightbulbs. This may sound silly at first but lightbulbs collect grease which traps in odors. Then, when the lightbulbs get hot, they diffuse the odors into your home. Cleaning them with your vinegar solution really helps eliminate this problem.

3. Clean all your drains with pure vinegar by pouring it in and letting it set at least two hours before pouring anything down them. It's works best to leave the vinegar to work its magic overnight. There's another trick to help get the vinegar into every crook and cranny of your drains. Before you pour in the vinegar, shake in some baking powder. This makes it the vinegar foam up and get into every nook.

4. White vinegar is also the best odor eliminator for fabrics. If you add a cup of white vinegar when you wash your curtains, bedding, and bathmats, this will completely eliminate mildew odors. You can also lightly spray your upholstery and carpets with the 50:50 vinegar to water solution and let it dry on. Modern fabric dyes should not be affected at this dilute concentration. However, if you are concerned, you could always test a tiny patch in an area that isn't noticeable.

5. If your cat or dog urinates on the carpet, pour a little vinegar into the spot and let it soak for at least a hour. Then blot it up. This should completely eliminate the odor, even better than sprinkling baking soda in fact.

Watch the video below!

How to Make Odor Eliminator with Vinegar

Final Thoughts About Using Vinegar As the Best Odor Eliminator

Keep in mind that using vinegar is the perfect solution for anyone who has asthma or other respiratory issues since vinegar will not cause a flare-up like so many chemical cleaners will. Also, using white vinegar is an environmentally friendly cleaning solution.

Some people do not like the scent of white vinegar. However, this scent dissipates completely in less than an hour, even faster if you open up a couple of windows to create cross ventilation. Just remember that vinegar is the best odor eliminator you can use in your home so if you can tolerate just 30-60 minutes of a pickle smell, you can get rid of all your household odors.